dont moan-organise!

these are difficult times.its tempting to complain,wallow and do nothing.it seeemsn to me it adds to the deadweight feeling/ambience in the world.

im pleased that i learned a different way,and have always referred to it as"dont moan-organise!",so please excuse the adaptation of the words of joe hill an early 20th century activist,if not founder of the IWW/industrial workers of the world.

for me,in qa world that seems increasingly dark and bleak,one of teh few reliable remaing near certainties or important values is human solidarity;meaning that we stand together with our brothers and sisters,especially the poor,exploited,oppressed.the apex,the fulcrum,the spark,the centreof gravity seeems to me to remain the working class which changes and develops.it is not just a notion,a mass,an abstraction but a real social force,mad up of many and diverse parts.individuals but not atomised or seperated,but who will seem that way until they/we overcome our alienation,and discover ourselves as subject and object of history.one place to start is individual to individual

so how to begin to make the theory,the image real....i turn to myself,my own experience,whichg again the one of the few fragments in the world about which i can have anything certainty,although the paradox is that little if anything is certain or rooted.

i find myself an isolated activist,returning to and re-exploring some of the basica and each time going deeper.to that end im eager to meet and join wityh others in sharing ideas and experiences and hoping we can act together and organise in the world,or at least a part of it,with a faint hope that we can serve revolutionary hange to a more humaitarian and compassionate world.a world for unalienated human species being.

to that end i would welcome contact with others to take some,new fresh steps.

long a marxist since i discovered marxism,amonst other things when I was about 16 years old,i feelive left some traditions behind,to explore more fully new paths.hence i am exploring lexemburgismfurther and deeper.

im happy to have the same anger and passion about marxist ideas at 50 something and not,i hope to have turned away from these politics of this tradition but to find new ways to make a differnce,especially when it seems from my corner of the world,living uin the greater london area to find that the left is more dangerously fragmented.fractured,sectarian and divided than before.the tasks are greater,our preparedness is weaker.we have to chnage and grow.not to lead the class,our class like we know and they dont but to build on the shoulkdrs of the giant wjho go before us,and to be both memory of that class and to make the best of the lessons of history in making revolutionary change.

not just to remember,nor even only to celebrate but to learn from,build on and developo from the lessons and examples and experiences of marx,of luxemburg ofmany other beacons of light and not least own own class.

Welcome to the forum, I hope you will find it useful and that you will take part in its development.

By the way, I am the one with whom you had contact last week on the technical side of the forum.

Looking for new paths as you say is what will happen, I think, to the working class in general around the world. One should just look at the mobilization of non-activist people all over Europe, to see that something is changing.

Revolutionary theories will get so much from this future movement as long as they do not try to impose their doctrines but rather use Marxism as a method of understanding the unfolding reality.

Luxemburgis has always been very weak since the failed revolution of 1919 in Berlin. Nevertheless, the ideas of Rosa Luxemburg, backed up by historical events, will certainly be welcomed by an awakening class. This is one of our most important goal : stregthen a political current that will contribute to social struggles for the overthrow of capistalism.

thanx again for your help,and thanx for your helpful an encouraging reply.

inevitably our reality has major gaps in it.sat the personal psychoogical level,I can see things moving but we need to maximise the connections and links to maximise the development and chance of "success".im feeling very isolated for reasons i might explain later and experience setbacks much more personally and profoundly than in the past/this is simply demoralising.

organisationaly and politically,too much of what remains of the left seems to apply tired tecniques in an authoritarian manner,and to treat its theory as if it quoting scripture.i found an article that within onre paragraph on contemprary events jumpedback to 140s germany at the trime of marx and wanted to reroduce the present in the image of the past,but without even a mechanistic relation of one to the other.

its looks like ILn and some other sites dont act out this caricature,so lets build here and elsewhere.

returning to it some months on,i did not realise how important a rule of thumb it has been for me over my lifetime and indeed these last several months.

at the time i originally wriote here,i think i said it was one of the tools in my own psychological toolbox,that when in difficulty i try not just to complain but to come up with if not a full blown solution then at least a suggestion,a way forward,a"component"in constructing a solution or resolution.

sometimes it might be literally to organise somethings in which collective experience can itself be a further starting point in seeking answers.

i now realise that having found myself in exactly that situation,where no-one knew what to do or had the confidence to do anything i proposed organsing exactly an opportunity to share experience,develop if nothing else a sense of the "us"all being in it together and hopefully developing a way to move on.i stress that this is not the "we are in this together"whih is part of the ideaological attack by government on workers,but aloingst a group of workers facing more than demoralisation.

that proposal came to nothing,but does it seems to me represent a further victory of demoralisation in a particular group of workers.politically,it seems to me i had to accept that and to re-think about what else might be done.

psychologically it proved a different kind of defeat for me.not long afterwards i became very seriously sick and am experiencing depression which is deeper and now chronic than in the past.it is no-ones fault.i do however believe that to put it colloqially there are times when "going nuts"is itself a rational and self-protective way for a mind to cope with what might be experienced as something uncopable-with.i also know that capitalism,via its multiple pressures on workers.combined with our alienation,literally can make you sick.whilst some might crack and break before others should be no comfort to any others in a society in which depression now affects 1 in 5 at some level and ast some time in life,and where in the "industry"in which i work stress,depression and mental health related conditions affect increasing numbers of people in which our labour is in the brain and of the head.

it is in the nature of mental health,that it is not physical in the same senses or to the same extent as physical illness.it is not invented or imaginary by either patient or doctor,though it is socially constructed.

at a pragmatic level,a broen leg is a broken leg,but one depression is not neccessarilly the same as another.in my case,even moderately severe depression makes ordinary thinking more difficult than at other times.doubt and self doubt may be usual conditions for many of us some of the time.for me it feels like all the time,and every thought can turn to an imagined dust of meaningless,as"whats the point?"can instantly undermine the most simple and basic plan to act,in life.

like many others i now live in a culture in which all public services are under attack.mental haelth,nearly always the cinderella of the national health services is now even more cut and delayed and waiting listed.we are forced to look to ourselves and each other,even if sometimes,to mix images this is"the blind leading the blind".meanwhile the pressure on those left working increases and may welkl drive more "ever the edge".

there has to be a better way.in the meantime i wonder what is the point of being put back together simply to be put back in a system,which so poorly adapted to our species-nature places increasing numbers of us into immiseration or into a madness that does or does not match the madness of the entire system that places profit above and beyond everything.